


Where Weary Riders Rest

by darthneko



Category: Vagrant Story
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-06-05
Updated: 2001-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-05 07:18:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1809973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking into Lea Monde, before it all begins. (zinefic for Con-strict, 2001)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Weary Riders Rest

The Graylands. They are, I think, appropriately named; even now, with the dawn past and the sun winding its way upwards in the clear sky, these lands seem nothing but gray to me. The outlying village farms that we have passed are naught but miserable huddles, the very walls of the houses seeming to lean upon each other for mutual support against their inevitable collapse.  
  
We rode in silence, the jangle of harness and the rhythmic clop of our horses' hooves the only sounds between us. Riding ahead of me Sydney was shapeless in his cloak, the dark folds wrapped thick around him.  
  
He had said nothing since he had caught up to us just beyond the town gates. Nothing but to curse at me for having waited for him, and naught but silence after that, his displeasure etched in the stiff lines of his shoulders for he will not turn to meet my eyes.  
  
As though I could - or would - leave him. I might have asked any other man if he thought so little of me, to leave a wounded comrade behind.  
  
Sydney was only irritated that I had not.  
  
Before me on the saddle, wrapped in the warmth of my own cloak, the boy slept. Lulled by our silence and the motion of the horse beneath us and tired from a night that had stretched too long for one so young, he had slipped with hardly the smallest of stirrings from the charm Sydney had placed upon him into the deeper sleep that belongs only to children and fools. It was a relief, really. Eyes that young did not need to have seen that final scene within the manor house, nor Sydney's state when he rejoined us.  
  
I left him there because he told me to, and because I had my arms full of the boy's limp weight. I could not have protected them both against one of the VKP's damn Riskbreaker knights, and the boy is too important. Sydney... Sydney is adept at taking care of himself. He told me to flee and I did.  
  
He told me to flee with the blood bubbling across his lips and the Riskbreaker's bowgun bolt lodged clean through his chest, the bright rivulets of his heart's blood trailing in crimson ribbons down his skin. In any other man, it would have been a mortal wound. Any other man could not have risen from the floor to assault the Riskbreaker from behind, earning me the precious moments needed to escape.  
  
There were times I wondered if Sydney was a man at all, or if his soul was closer to those hellspawned creatures he summoned from the Dark. His flesh, I think, is human only when he chooses it to be... and those times are few and far between.  
  
He was bled white when he rejoined us, but he would not take my help to mount into the saddle. The bolt hole in his chest was half closed already, the blood soaking him from chest to hip, but he would not let me clean him or bandage it, snarling at me that we had no time. I swear that I could see the red beat of his heart fluttering beneath the torn edges of his flesh in a macabre pulse.  
  
Sydney only pressed a cold hand to it, gathered up the reigns in his free hand with precise care, and spurred his horse to speed as though it were nothing at all, naught but a scratch.  
  
He would not tell me what he did with the Riskbreaker, but I doubted my guess wrong if the man was on our heels even now. Him and all the damned Crimson Blade Knights, and we fleeing like foxes before a pack of hounds.  
  
We had been in the saddle for several hours, and were some distance from the last village. When Sydney signaled a halt, reigning his horse in among the trees, I had lost track of how far we had come - carelessness on my part.  
  
"We'll wait here," he told me, glancing back across his shoulder. No explanation of why, but Sydney did nothing without reason. "How is the boy, Hardin?"  
  
I half shrugged, glancing down at the the tousled head of pale hair that rested easily against my chest. "Asleep. And you?"  
  
His look was scathing. When he shrugged from his cloak, letting the folds tumble back, the blood had dried into rusty brown rivulets across his bare back, marring the fine dark lines of the inverse cross tattoo that stretched from nape to waist along his slender spine. But of the wound that had caused those smears, there was no sign.  
  
Sydney looped his reins across his saddle pommel and slid easily down to the ground, signaling me to follow. I gathered the boy in my arms, careful not to jostle him, and slid down as well. At Sydney's curt gesture I left him pillowed upon my cloak near the horses. He turned in his sleep, curling on his side, one rosy cheek cushioned upon his hand.  
  
I followed Sydney up a brief rise, to where the trees thinned just on the other side. There the sun was brighter, golden in the morning light, and the breeze that touched our cheeks was stained with the cool, wet smell of the sea that shimmered below.   
  
And across the channel, her walls rising like iridescent fingers towards the sun, as bright as Valendia and the Graylands had been cold, was Lea Monde. Though men called her streets cursed and made the sign of warding at her name, still she gleamed more lovely than the brightest jewel in a king's crown.  
  
"Lea Monde." The city's name, on Sydney's lips, was whispered more tenderly than I had ever heard him whisper the name of a lover. But in another instant his eyes had turned dark once more and his voice was as cool as before. "The Blades will be there already."  
  
I felt the shiver run down my back, raising the hairs at my nape. He said it not as a guess, but as a certainty. "Surely not," I replied. "Our brethren..."  
  
"Will be dead," he sighed. It was not one of his prophecies, crooned softly as his eyes turned hazy and distant. Those things were for his followers but he would not use such artifice with me, leaving his chill truths as bare of trappings as he himself knew them to be. "The Church sent their Knights ahead to breach Lea Monde's broken walls even as they sent them to roust us from our game with the Duke."  
  
"Then..." I put a hand to the rough bark of a tree, feeling it solid beneath my touch. "That was hours ago, Sydney! By now..."  
  
"The Knight will have taken most of the city," Sydney said coolly. "We are no match for them, you know that."  
  
I could feel my stomach twist. He spoke only truth, of that I was certain. The source of his knowledge was his own, but if he said it then assuredly it was true. But our comrades, those who had followed him and his words even as I did... workers, rough men, no match for the blades of Knights. They would be hunted and killed through Lea Monde's abandoned streets, like so many rats, and there...  
  
Death in Lea Monde was nothing I would wish on anyone. Death within that city's spell wrought walls was neither heaven nor hell but rather its own brand of forever. It was the price we paid for the power the city gave us.  
  
"If you knew," I said, my voice low, "if you  _knew_... Why not warn them? They could have fled, the whole countryside is nigh empty... dammit, Sydney..."   
  
"This is war, Hardin," he told me softly. "What would you have had me tell them? Lea Monde will cradle their souls within her walls, as she has cradled the soul of everyone to step foot upon those streets for the last two decades. They keep good company."  
  
I had to bite back the heated flare of anger in my breast. It was his nature that he would not care, he who played people and events like elaborate games upon a chess board. But that callousness, to those who had served him well, who had hailed him as the prophet of the new age and lent their strength and numbers to his vision... it left a bitter, ugly taste in my mouth. "Does the cursed city cradle your soul as well?" I snapped. "That you should feel so little..."  
  
Sydney did not take offense. He only smiled, his pale lips curving slightly, the shimmer of his eyes half lidded. "Perhaps." He turned away once more, looking out towards Lea Monde's walls. "Can you scry for me, Hardin? Are we near enough? The Riskbreaker, curse him, will know where we go - I should dislike to encounter him on our very doorstep."  
  
I swallowed my anger and took a breath, closing my eyes. That he should ask it of me was a concession, a necessary admittance of where his own strengths failed before my own. Sydney could read a man's soul in a glance, strip away flesh and bone and seeming to lay bare the core like a song that only he could hear, but at a distance my own meager talents surpassed his own. Sydney could hear, past and future, but Lea Monde had gifted me with the talent of sight within the present.  
  
When I reached my thoughts out I could glimpse them all, the mind's eye clearer than those of flesh within my skull. Sydney, the boy, our horses, the creatures in the forest around us - I touched each in turn, like a map of lights laid out within my mind, but the edges fell away into gray nothing long before I could reach to the entrance of Lea Monde and no straining on my part would draw that fog aside. "Nay," I sighed, letting the sight go as I opened my eyes once more to the morning light. "Too far. I can't reach from here."  
  
Sydney nodded and if he were disappointed he showed no sign. "Very well. We shall go with caution. I think the Riskbreaker shall proceed us - it does no harm to let him venture ahead and clear the way."  
  
"Trying to turn the tables? A Riskbreaker will not make a good fox, nor the Knights, and we make a motley group of hounds."  
  
He smiled at me, an expression which softened his eyes for the barest moment with genuine humor. "Nay, Hardin. We are the hares still. But even a hare might double back to confound the trail when the hunters draw too close. Let the Riskbreaker find his own way into Lea Monde. We shall not lead him, but rather follow as he breaks his own path."  
  
"He and the Knights may have each other, and good riddance to them both," I snapped, then sighed. "Are we to go, then?"  
  
"We'll bide a bit longer," Sydney replied. "Come." He turned away to wind back once more into the trees, to where we had left the horses and the boy.  
  
All of whom were where we had left them, and the boy still sound asleep. "The Duke's son," I breathed quietly, looking down at him. "Sydney, the man has Parliament in his hand. He'll send Riskbreakers after us until world's end for this boy."  
  
"Of course," Sydney replied just as quietly. His eyes, when he looked at the child, were shuttered and I wondered what he saw there. "The boy is our insurance, Hardin. A son born late in a man's life is a precious miracle, for he will have no more. So long as we hold the young lad, the Duke can not use a free hand. Let him hunt us - he can not harm for fear of losing his only chance at immortality." There was a bitter, harsh tone to his voice, the words bitten sharp, and in the end he turned away.  
  
I glanced back at the boy. The sunlight dappled through the leaves of the trees to spray across the leaf carpeted ground. One puddle of light had caught against the boy's head, turning his hair to liquid white gold and his skin to rose tinted porcelain.  
  
Sydney's own golden locks had been that pale, fine, childish color once. I sighed and turned away as well; to say any more on the subject of the boy would be only to anger him.  
  
There was a half filled water skin strapped to my saddle; I loosened it and fished a scrap of rag from another pocket. "Sydney," I called, and when he turned I hefted the skin, gesturing wordlessly to the blood streaked and drying across his chest. He glanced down, then shrugged, though his lips had a hardened twist to them.  
  
I wetted the cloth and brought it to him. He stood motionless as I washed the worst of the blood from his skin, pausing only to wring the cloth out and wet it once more. Where the bolt had entered, above the throb of his heart, there was nothing at all - not even a scar to mark its passing. Dark sorceries. Immortality.  
  
Sydney had bought them at a cost, something I knew better than most. The outward signs of that price rested heavily at his sides as I washed him, dark eldritch steel gleaming dull in the morning light. From shoulder to finger tip, smooth and unbroken, metal and spell wrought into the semblance of mortal limbs. At first glance one always thought them only armor, but there were no catches, no straps, no joints to bind them in place.  
  
He told me, once, that he had given his limbs to the gods. I did not ask what he received in exchange. A man's pacts with his deities should remain his own.  
  
When he turned to let me repeat the process across his back the long, sharp blades set at each fingertip clinked softly one against the other, with the cold scrape of metal on metal. There is much he can do with them... and much he can not. Sydney knows his own limitations, and like with the sight he has grown used to asking me for that which he can not do himself.  
  
I wiped the last of the blood from his hip and wrung the cloth out once more. It was hardly perfect, but as good as could be had without a real wash and certainly better than as blood streaked as he had been. "Thank you," he told me simply as he turned to face me once more, only courtesy, long since worn to naught but the habit of words between us. Then he paused, head tilted slightly as he regarded me. "What is it?"  
  
No man keeps secrets from Sydney. I knew better than to try. The truth, no matter how harsh, is better than lies. "The others," I said quietly. "When the time comes, Sydney... will you cast me aside as easily as you did them?"  
  
I flung the bolt for my own sake, troubled and needing something, some target. To my own surprise I saw it hit home in him, his lips tightening, his eyes dark and clouded. He flinched back as though I had struck him, but I caught his eyes and I would not let them go.  
  
"Hardin," he breathed at last. "Sweet Hardin... you know I would not. We have been friends, you and I, all but brothers... your death would be a worse blow to me than any steel might strike."  
  
"Would it?" I queried. "You shrug off the bite of steel like it is naught but a scratch, Sydney. That tells me nothing at all."  
  
I could not read his eyes, nor his face. No one could wear a mask against him but Sydney himself... I sometimes wondered if he ever removed his own. If any one, anywhere, myself included, had ever seen him without the walls before his eyes that hid the secrets that lay beneath.  
  
He raised his hands, reaching out. I stood fast - it was a sign of trust with him, both the reaching and the unflinching acceptance. He was the very soul of carefulness. Blades sharp enough to flay flesh from bone curved almost tenderly around my face, the touch of steel shaped in the likeness of a man's palm laying cold against my cheeks. Held like that, I did not dare to move; Sydney, rather, was the one to lean up and the light brush of his lips against my own was as cool as his hands. Only his breath held any warmth at all, as though he would lock all warmth fast within himself, deep beneath the surface.  
  
Prophet, they named him. Sorcerer. Seer. He is all of that and more besides, but worst of all he is a drug. More potent than any extract of poppy, he slips beneath the skin to linger, like a craving that can never be fulfilled.  
  
And I... I am an addict.   
  
The lightest of kisses. Only a taste, lip to lip, and the barest brush of his tongue against mine. And for that alone, I knew, I would have let him slip the knife into my heart with his own cold hands.  
  
"Have you seen my death?" I whispered when he let me go. "You saw theirs... have you seen mine, Sydney?"  
  
"No, Hardin," he replied. I looked into his eyes, which never wavered, and could not believe him.  
  
But he would keep his secrets and I would keep my truths. It was all we knew how to do, I think, but I still wished at times that there was aught that could force Sydney to the same honesty which he drew forth in those around him.  
  
A sleepy, inarticulate sound broke us apart. Our little hostage was waking, rubbing at his eyes with childish fists as he pushed himself free of the folds of my cloak. Sydney watched him for a moment, his face betraying nothing at all, and then he stepped forward. The boy froze at once when Sydney dropped down to his heels beside the child, wide blue eyes huge but unfrightened in his face.  
  
"Hello, Joshua," Sydney said quietly. "My name is Sydney. That is Hardin. I think you recall Hardin from last night, yes?"  
  
The boy's eyes flickered to me, then back to Sydney. He said nothing at all, which seemed to amuse Sydney.   
  
"Keep your silences, little brother," he whispered, so low I barely heard. Then, once more in a normal tone, "Shall we, then? Come, boy, are you awake enough to ride?"  
  
Sydney held out his hand to the boy. He kept the blades curled in towards himself but it must still be a fearsome sight to a child. The boy, however, did not flinch. He reached up, slipping one small hand over Sydney's, and let the man draw him to his feet. Sydney gently lead the boy back to me, indicating I should take him. "We've paused long enough," he told me. "It's time to go. The curtain is rising on the final act and it wouldn't do to miss it."  
  
"Of course," I replied by habit. The boy said nothing at all, not even when I swung him up onto the saddle, only sitting still until I retrieved my cloak and climbed up behind him. Were it not for the bright sharpness in his eyes I might have wondered him mute or idiot, but there was only silent trust in him when he leaned back into my embrace as I gathered up the reins.  
  
Sydney seemed in a fine mood of a sudden, all but smiling as he nudged his horse into motion. "Let us go see how Valendia's finest Knights find the hospitality of our home, shall we, Hardin?" he asked with a laugh. And I, as always, could only follow him.


End file.
